An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot onboard. The flight of a drone is controlled autonomously by computers in the vehicle, or under remote control of a navigator or pilot on the ground or in another vehicle.
One class of drone is the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone. There are many examples of VTOL drones in the prior art. Some exemplary VTOL drones incorporate tilt rotors, such as two large propellers mounted to the ends of an abbreviated wing designed to tilt the propellers from a vertical position for VTOL maneuvering to a horizontal position for normal flight. This “tilt-rotor” design is effective but is difficult to engineer and construct, and is inherently unstable between the vertical and horizontal positions of the propellers. Another exemplary class of VTOL drones utilizes redirected thrust, which incorporate turbofan/jet engines that produce tremendous amounts of directed thrust, which is redirected downward for VTOL maneuvers. As with the well-known tilt-rotor design, VTOL drones that incorporate redirected thrust systems are difficult to engineer and construct and are inherently unstable between the direct and redirected thrust orientations. Furthermore, the turbofan/jet engines of redirected thrust VTOL drones are prone to overheating and failure during prolonged VTOL maneuvering, which, of course, prevents redirected thrust VTOL drones from engaging in persistent VTOL maneuvers.
In an effort to solve these and other and other deficiencies in tilt-rotor and redirected thrust VTOL drone designs, skilled artisans have developed fixed wing VTOL drones with independently powered VTOL thrusters housed in thruster housings, and an independently powered horizontal thruster. Although this arrangement provides better stability during the transition between VTOL maneuvers and horizontal flight, unwanted buffeting occurs between the thruster housings and the thrusters during VTOL maneuvers, and the thruster housings produce drag and reduce vehicle maneuverability during forward flight operations, which tends causes the horizontal thruster to overheat or otherwise run at unacceptably high temperatures that can lead to a premature and potentially catastrophic engine failure.